Month: October 2014
Hey All!
Just a quick note for the 3rd week of October
The Quality Education Fair
This Sunday is the Quality Education Fair at Pioneer Square. I think the weather will cooperate and it is going to be a great day. I have been told there will be booths with games and bubbles as well as performances by PPS kiddos. It will be a great day for the family. The more people who show up the larger the message will be. We think of our students as people not data mines and test scores. It is from 12:00 to 3:00. I hope to see you there.
Math Tutoring Flyer
I sent home a Math tutoring program flyer with everyone this week. I know there was some confusion about whether or not I chose to only send them with specific students. Truth is everyone got a flyer for it. It’s not really remedial math either. It is more of a chance to get more practice with math skills they already have a pretty clear grasp on. There is never enough time in a day to practice everything during the school day.
Conferences
I have most everyone signed up for conferences, but if you are one of the few who haven’t yet signed up please do it ASAP. If you are one of the many who misplaced that scrap piece of paper that you wrote down the conference schedule on. Feel free to check it HERE at any time. Also if you want to change to an open slot I will have no problem with that. Remember that Thursday is located on sheet 2 and you can change that in the bottom left corner.
Have a great weekend
Allison
Happy October
Hey All,
October is a great month and I only wish the weather would cooperate. I am a sun lover but I am ready for the fall weather.
Math
We just finished up Unit 1 and we are moving onto bigger and better things. We will be looking at numbers and something called minimal collections. Which essentially has us looking at numbers and the groupings of numbers. Which of course leads us to (duh da da duh) carrying and borrowing in the traditional algorithm. We will be learning to add and subtract larger numbers and we will need some more efficient ways to add and subtract than tally marks. We also have started looking at multiplication as repeated addition. I am not going to link the home connection website for Unit two. The reason is that we have changed Unit 2 so much that I don’t think it would match up with their learning. It used to be mostly about the base 4 and base 5 counting systems. It is confusing so I will link the next unit to the bridges website.
Writing
We are currently working on our Monster writing piece. This is a tough task for many of our writers because we are working in paragraphs. These paragraphs all have different requirements and they have to do all of these things while telling a story. They are doing a great job so far. They each have an outline of the story, an illustration and a rough draft of an intro paragraph. We will be finished with these stories by October 28th. The reason we will be finished is because the stories will all be published. I have to hand them in by Halloween in order to get them back by the 7th. You will have the opportunity to purchase one of the books if you would like one. They are very cool.
Quality Education Fair
Here is the flyer for the Quality Education Fair Hopefully it is a really nice day and you can go down to Pioneer Square to see what is going on. It is a great way to show Portland that we care more about our kids than their test scores.
Volunteering
Hey guys, if you are interested in coming into the classroom and volunteering I am looking for people to come in during Math worktime. I do it everyday, except Wednesdays, from 9:00 to 10:30. So right after drop off. I work with small groups of students and the rest of the class is busy working on their other jobs. I need someone to help keep the others focused on their tasks and purpose. If you would like to do this let me know.
Have a great week!
October Already (Conference Sign ups)
Hello,
I can’t believe it is October already. It seems like we just got here. But as usual things are moving right along. Just a quick check in
Writing
Before we start our new Storyline for the fall and the winter we are spending time just on a writing project. I call it our monster writing. They are spending this entire month writing a story with a central monster character. They also are learning all about paragraphs, how to make them, why they should make them and how them should look when they are done. We have just introduced the concept of indenting and that is always the toughest part for third graders to grasp. We will share our monster stories with each other on the 28th of October and then it will be turned into a book for our Library.
Math
We are finishing up our unit one which is mostly just review of 2nd grade. We are practicing our addition and subtraction strategies to make them more efficient and make us faster mathematicians. But of course time marches on so quickly and we will be taking a look at fractions, money, two digit addition and subtraction, number lines and the very beginnings of multiplication through arrays.
Conferences
Here is the link for conference sign ups. You can look to check your time or of course sign up if you haven’t signed up yet. Keep in mind that Friday is on sheet 2 of the signup. The bottom left hand corner will allow you to go back and forth between days. I am also trusting you not to delete people so you can sign up in their slot. I am certain I have nothing to worry about in that department. If you do accidentally delete something you shouldn’t let me know and we will try and sort it out.
If later on you need/want to check the sign up sheet you can just search for conference sign up and it should bring up this page.
Quality Education Fair
On Sunday October 19th in Pioneer Courthouse Square is the Quality Education Fair. It is going to be a great event that is not about test scores but about the quality of education we are giving to Oregon students. There will be some great information about holding our state accountable for their promises to our students. This will be a fun family event and we can show people what is important to us.
One last note
Check out my scholastic post just before this one. It explains how to order book. If you guys order books using this we get points to order books for our classroom library. Diary of a WImpy kid is coming out next month and they will get it delivered on release date.
CSS 3rd Grade 